‘Destroyed’: Murdered backpacker’s mum discusses her heartbreak

Murdered British backpacker Grace Millane’s mum has opened up about her daughter’s brutal death and the tragic series of events that followed.

The mother of murdered British backpacker Grace Millane has opened up about how her daughter’s killer “destroyed her family”.

Gillian Millane, from Wickford, Essex, said she doesn’t think about Jesse Shane Kempson – who strangled Grace, 21, to death while she was on a trip to New Zealand in 2018.

Kempson, then 28, brutally murdered his Tinder date Grace then hid her body in a forest, where it lay undiscovered for eight days.

He claimed they were engaged in consensual “rough sex” when she died.

The killer was sentenced to 17 years behind bars without parole after he lost his final appeal against his murder conviction.

The body of British tourist Grace Millane was found in a section of bush at West Auckland's Waitakere Ranges five days after she was murdered.

The body of British tourist Grace Millane was found in a section of bush at West Auckland's Waitakere Ranges five days after she was murdered. Picture: Getty Images

Speaking this week, Gillian said: “I don’t think about him, I don’t care what happens to him,” The Sun reports.

“He came into our life and destroyed our family. I don’t care about his name, I don’t care about him.”

She told the Extraordinary Ordinary podcast that the trial in 2019 was “horrendous” as she had to sit in a courtroom for days “while they’re annihilating your daughter”.

University of Lincoln graduate Grace was only spending two weeks in New Zealand following six in South America – with hopes to travel to Thailand, the Philippines, and Australia – when she met Kempson.

CCTV cameras captured the pair embracing in bars across Auckland on December 1, 2018, the eve of Grace’s 22nd birthday.

Jesse Shane Kempson was found guilty of the murder of British backpacker Grace Millane. Picture: Getty Images.

Grace Millane’s final hours on a date with Kempson were captured on CCTV.

Grace was last seen leaving a lift to go to Kempson’s room at the CityLife Hotel.

It later emerged that he strangled Grace and took intimate photos of her naked body before searching pornography on his phone.

Her corpse was stuffed in a suitcase and buried in a shallow grave with a blanket of mud shovelled on top in the Waitākere Ranges.

Kempson was caught on CCTV using a porter’s trolley to wheel two suitcases into a lift.

Tragically, Grace’s dad David Millane was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2019, during the first three-week trial of Kempson.

The cancer spread to David’s brain and he died in November 2020.

Gillian said: “That was another disastrous Christmas and New Year.”

Following her own battle with breast cancer, which she beat shortly before Grace’s murder, and the two shocking deaths, the heartbroken mum said she was “in such a dark, lonely place and I pushed everybody away”.

She explained: “Trying to find your path on this road of grief is a very difficult thing to do.

“You get to a point when you realise that you’re the only one that can get you out of there.”

Gillian is now heavily involved with charities including White Ribbon, which aims to prevent violence against women and girls.

The parents of Grace Millane, David and Gillian Millane arrive at the Auckland High Court on November 06, 2019. Picture: Phil Walter/Getty Images.

“I can say that my toes are always in the darkness and sometimes my feet and waist, but my head is probably more in the sun now,” she said.

A new documentary, The Murder of Grace Millane, will scrutinise the night of the 21-year-old’s death and Kempson’s subsequent trial.

It will focus on the killer’s defence, which felt to Gillian like her daughter was blamed in some way for going back to Kempson’s hotel room, and the reaction from social media.

Filmmaker Helena Coan told Sky News: “People don’t really understand the prevalence of the rough sex defence.

“Men are getting away with the most heinous, manipulative, planned, premeditated crimes. And they are saying, basically, ‘she asked for it’.

“It’s scary to see how lawyers use this defence and how juries still buy into this idea, that a woman can consent to being strangled to death.”

A picture posted on Instagram by Declan Millane, brother of Grace Millane.

In October 2020, Kempson was convicted on eight charges – including unlawful sexual connection, threatening to kill, assault with a weapon and male assault female – related to offending against a former partner.

He was convicted a month later of sexually violating another female British tourist in an unrelated incident.

Kempson received an 11-year prison sentence over the new charges to be served concurrently with his life sentence.

The killer failed to have two other convictions dismissed earlier this year. He claimed the women in the case exaggerated their evidence of sexual violence, but the Court of Appeal in Auckland determined there was no excessive sentence or miscarriage of justice.

– With The Sun